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Talk:Character Creation/@comment-37.214.26.23-20190305174937/@comment-45075715-20200220181800
Have you tried Barclay Arquebusiers BTW? Actually what got me excited about PoP again was hearing about the introduction of firearms. I thought wow, that's different, and I never expected that. And so installed the latest version last week or two and started playing again after not having played in a couple of years (another reason I might seem noob is that my memory is a bit rusty having not played PoP in so long), and discovered this wiki site as a result of looking up the Arquebus and trying to find out more about it. Unfortunately I found them soooo disappointing! I don't know if I'm using them wrong or what but I just find them sub-optimal to even RR and EAC even though RR and EAC are cheaper and easier to acquire. Actually I could swear that upgrading Barclay Balestras to Arquebusiers made them much more ineffective (a downgrade more than upgrade) because I had a period where I had half Balestras left still, half Arquebusiers, and in spite of positioning them together I saw my combat log flooded with Balestra kills but almost no Arquebusier kills whatsoever. I'd see like 8 of them fire at once down a hill and maybe only one kill, whereas the Balestras were flooding my game log with kills. Actually I didn't even look up the Arquebus and discover this wiki site until after trying it a lot and finding them totally ineffective, thinking I'm either doing something wrong or that they're borderline broken with the way the AI is using them and need a buff or AI tweak (like enhanced firearm AI) or something. On the plus side, I'm all invested and excited about PoP again despite it... but I really found the Arquebusiers to be so lackluster. I didn't expect them to be better than x-bows or bows, but at least a strong argument there to favor them in some cases like how there is a strong argument for x-bows over bows... and I found no such strong argument yet. The AI's stupidity just seems to get more and more pronounced the slower their weapons (both melee and ranged), and I think the Arquebus is probably the slowest weapon in the entire game (speed rating doesn't seem universal -- it seems relative to the weapon's type and attack animation). Enhanced firearm AI would be so awesome but sounds difficult to implement. Then again I never expected a mod to make enhanced horse archery improvements. What I'm thinking in terms of enhanced firearm AI is that the AI doesn't fire all at once so that they can lay down a continous stream of rifle fire -- one group of arquebusiers reloading while the other group is firing, then other group reloads and they alternate (with potentially more than two groups -- maybe every 10 arquebusiers fire before the next 10 fire)... or a poorman's version is that they just kind of randomly delay by up to a few seconds for the very first shot in a battle when they shoot so that they don't all fire at once so that some can still be firing while others are reloading. Such an enhanced AI could benefit x-bows as well and even bows to a degree (so that they don't waste arrows all firing at once at a lone unit walking up a hill and hit him with like 30 more arrows than required to kill him), but would be especially beneficial to the extremely long reloading times of Arquebus. Another potential ranged AI improvement is that right now, it appears like ranged units tend to mostly target the nearest enemy. That makes them often waste ammo firing at the same few units if the same few units are the closest, and that tends to overkill the same few units (ex: 30 ranged units targeting the same 2-3 enemies). This is especially costly for weapons that take ages to reload. So maybe a tweak, if possible, is to make them account for angle and not just distance so that they favor not only the nearest enemy but also prefer to fire in front of them to help them vary up their targets. Oh well, sorry, I'm going way off on a tangent! And I'm just kinda exchanging ideas -- not being like user trying to suggest improvements (this is probably the wrong place to do that). Again I'm a gamedev by trade so I tend to be flooded with thoughts about how games are designed and tend to be eager to spill those thoughts wherever. :-D I'm actually doing this mostly to help me better design my own games, not so much to suggest improvements to other games... but I'm kind of an open book here and chatterbox always talking people's ears off until they lose interest! :-D